Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1885-1890, 1887-01-01

UldChS11lllIt StlOp. VI iooAlot}s SUS. ANOH.
this drawing is the appearance of the
thing to his eye OF paper, which he is to
make. The language of drawingi is uni
versal. It is understood by people of
every nationality. AT the end of the pre-
scribed course in a manual training school
every boy becomes a thorough craftsman,
and perhaps a fine artist, if he has the nat
ural taste for it.
The first room the boy is taken into, al
ter he has become somewhat proficient in
drawing, is the carpenter shop or laborato-
ry. Her" the teacher draws on the black
board the lesson to be worked out by the
boys, by the use of tools. It may consist
of saving off a board squarely, or the
making of a joint, mortice, lennon, OF a
frame involving all these principles. The
students are all soon at work with their
tools, and the shop huns at the sound of
them. The use of every tool is explained
to them by the teacher. The boys get ex-
cited by their labor, and as they see their
work taking shape under their hands,
they show a glow of pleasure. They have
taken the first great step in manual train
ing. They have applied the knowledge
they have acquired in the school room. to
the making of something useful. 1t is the
work of their own head and hands, and
they feel proud of it. They feel self-reli-
ant and Independent.
After the boys have sufficiently learned
the use of carpenter tools in the work
shop, which mostly consists in working
in corners, squares and angles, they are
introduced to the turning lathe, Or wood
turning room. Here they learn to make
spheres, cylinders and eccentric forms, in
which nature delights, as seen in the
growth of flowers, plants and trees. It is
the poetry of form, instead of the prose Of
squares and angles, or flat surfaces. The
round or cylinder form is used in mostly
all the ornamental arts and especially in
making beautiful jewelry-in the wheels
and axles of the wagon and locomotive, or
the wheels and shafts of great steamships,
as we'll as in the beautiful ear and we'd
ding rings. By the use of the lathe every
piece of machinery can be duplicated to
perfection, if done automatically. Every
part of q watch Or a gun can be made SO
that every piece can be replaced by its
duplicate to the most perfect nicely, which
it is utterly impossible for the hands of
man to do.
The boy after a thorough drill in the
use of the carpenter tools and turning
lathe, wherein he finds he can make what
his mind has conceived, and which he has
drafted into shape, he becomes not only
self reliant, but feels a new manhood in
himself, and then he seeks the best books
relating to the science and art in which he
feels interested, and thus he becomes a
student, and he improves both morally and
mentally, for he becomes SO interested in
his works that he has no time or %inclina-
ton to learn bad habits.
1t is said that but amoderate percentage
of convicts in our prisons can read OF
write, and that not five per cent of them
ever learned a mechanical trade, Now, if
there We're a manual training department
attached to every public school in all our
broad land, wherein the boys and girls
could perfectly learn the use of tools in
some department of labor, we could al
most abolish our penitentiaries, for all
would know how to do something useful.
The want of such knowledge is the great
est source of crime among us. This
knowledge the manual training school will
give, and as a rule, when a man has some
profitable work to do he will not be idle
or get into mischief.
In the Chicago manual training school
and in manual training schools of Boston,
New York, st. Louis and elsewhere, in
addition to the carpenter and wood turn
ing shops, the pupils are taught pattern
working. founding, or how to cast iron,
brass, etc, into shapes after the patterns
they have first drawn and made. Then
they are taught forging by the hammer in
a blacksmith shop, the articles and tools
they have designed and drawn in the
school room. Thus they are taught
thoroughly the use of tools in every de-
partInent of art, and are taught how to
make tools as we'll as use them.
After learning well in the wood depart
ment, they generally finish up in the met
al department by the use of the chisel,
file, drill, ETC., so as to make every part of
what they have made fit perfectly togeth-